Over-50

Ecommerce: More research, less opinion

Ecommerce or conducting business, including our search for jobs and clients, has gone mainstream.  That's what we know.   Because this keeps changing, the process is usually fraught with uncertainty. That generates high angst, especially among us over-50 who are digital immigrants.  Step number-one is to recognize, embrace, and then manage that fear.  Then we can proceed, as well as if not better than the digital natives.

One issue we are beginning to struggle with is this.  There's a shift on the web to more information.  In the early days of ecommerce, opinion - the stronger the better - dominated.  So many of us buttoned-down corporate types had plenty of fun ranting.  Deja vu the counterculture 1960s. That era has passed.  Those who keep opining keep losing ground.  Instead, there's a demand for information, with a side of insight derived from that data.  Raw opinion is not valued because we need to get a handle on what is developing in ecommerce.  That means research.

 
Developing a nose for where the information is

Where do we go for no-cost or low-cost research resources?  Well, plugging in keywords into search engines like Google won't get us very far.  Recently, I tried that with several client projects, ranging from a white paper on network-centric organizations to website content for educational tours in China. 

Here are suggestions:

Local library.  If you have a library card, the odds are excellent you can gain free access to their electronic databases.  In Connecticut, that resource provided all I needed for articles I am writing for my own byline on book covers in the era of e-books and what terms to use when referring in journalism or marketing communications to all the segments within the over-50 category.  A literature search on the search engines didn't turn up much.

Alma mater. The colleges and universities we graduated from usually give us access to their libraries and special collections through their alumni organizations.  For a little over $60, I can join the University of Michigan alumni association and use it to get into the databases.

Local academic institutions.  Four-year colleges/universities and community colleges often establish limited free community access to their libraries.  To find out which ones may be doing this, you can start asking about this at the reference desk of your local library.

Client/employer.  Frequently, clients and employers, even small ones, have established a relationship with libraries and think tanks.   They can provide you with their password.

Government databases.  As Wendy Boswell explains in an article this month, the government has plenty of information.  The problem is that much of that is located in what's known as the "deep web."  To "get in," we have to equip ourselves with navigation guides.  Boswell provides the common ones here.

Social Recruiting = Digital Personal Branding, Job Searching, New Biz Development

"Social recruiting"is the official term for branding ourselves and pursuing professional opportunities on the web and through mobile. 

 
The traditional business card has evolved into how we put ourselves out there on the web and through mobile.  The trick is developing a clear brand identity and leveraging it through platforms which are effective for us.

If we Baby Boomers aren't learning about that approach we are either rich already and don't need any more money or we have gotten into bad habits.  Among those bad habits would be passively applying to opportunities already posted online, networking solely at local and national trade associations, and telling  neighbors, oh, by the way, to let us know if they hear about any jobs or businesses which might need our services.

Because this tool is both relatively new and is, like technology, mutating always, we can leverage it in ways we feel most comfortable and rely on some platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter more than others such as Facebook and Google+.  We can also stay within the box of our expertise, such as if we are verbal or visual.  Regarding the latter, more marketing messages are being delivered via provocative graphic layout such as on Mashable, photos, and video. 

Okay, what are some of the emerging rules of this road now being more traveled?  Here they are:

 Be strategic, all the time.  Social media is like your family: it notices everything and it never forgets.  That means there is no place for spontaneous behavior.  Before we create our brand we have to figure out what messages we want it to send and for what commercial objectives.  Then stay in that box. 

In her new book "The Social Media Survival Guide for Political Campaigns," Sherrie A. Madia explains how even seasoned politicos confuse constituents about who they are and undermine their messaging when they impulsively tweet, post on a blog, or even create a video which isn't aligned with the overall strategy. 

Since politicos have to be ahead of the curve, analysing what they do right and wrong is the best briefing in social recruiting.  Both governors Chris Christie and Rick Perry got where they are and might even get to the White House by being 100% strategic in social media.

 

Divide and conquer.  We have to figure out what organizations, market segments, and individuals we want to have a conversation with.  Social recruiting is a niche game.  Once we determine that, for example, we need the attention of consumer-products companies and Pepsico in particular, then we create communications which will be picked up by them.  Just about everyone who is in business and wants to stay that way monitors what's being said about them digitally, even if it's just using Google Alerts. 

Those communications might be how we encountered and solved a problem which that entity could be struggling with.  I did just that on my two syndicated sites http://janegenova.com and http://lawandmore.typepad.com.  The subject was having leadership's opinion-editorials published in top-tier global media such as THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.  Three prospects, including a former official of the World Economic Forum, contacted me about my services.

Develop patience, with a side of persistence.  Relationships online, as in-person, take time to develop.  Fatal move to ask someone to join your LinkedIn network and then respond with a pitch.  A woman in web services did that to me and, of course, she's finished, at least in my circle of contacts.

Eventually, yes, ask others for help with your search, providing feedback on the script for your video, or briefing you about what their company looks for in a vendor.

Do favors.  Commercial activities operate on what's known as The Favor Bank.  Public relations guru Bob Dilenschneider brought that term mainstream in his 1990 book "Power and Influence."  In a sense, Dilenschneider gave business permission to accept and admit that favors were the glue which held the game together.  After all, participating in a particular favor bank signals other members that you will play by the group's rules. 

I discuss the dynamics of The Favor Bank in my interview with BLOOMBERG BUSINESS WEEK, which you can read here.  If you review someone's book, especially without being asked, or leave a carefully thought out comment on their site, that's a favor.  That person is in your debt.  Either you will be approached with some good thing or you are in a position of strength to ask.

Analyze.  Retrieve and study what others are doing in times of social recruiting.  Adopt what you determine are best practices, at least for now.

Job Search = Marketing, All Marketing Has Become Personal

Searching for a job or clients and customers in the current economy is anything but a routine, ritualized activity.  Agreed, it had been.  There had been formulas for applying for this.  At college and in outplacement the then experts laid out the formulas.

Currently, a search participates in many of the same marketing fundamentals as does positioning and packaging a low-calorie healthy beverage.  Then there's the new overlay, created by social media, that the pitch must be personal.  It's all about one human being talking with another human being.

So, what does that mean for cover letters, resumes, and guidelines for interviewing?  Here are just a few of the emerging oughts:

Customize.  Align as much as possible to the specific needs of the employer, customer, or client, the unique organizational culture, and how your particular skills, experience, and accomplishments will help them achieve their goals - more cost-efficiently and effectively than other applicants could.

Connect emotionally.  Did you father work for railroad?  Mention an anecdote if you are applying for an opportunity with MetroNorth.  You might be applying at March of Dimes.  So, of course, briefly discuss how your cousin's birth defect impacted the family.   We buy because of emotional reasons. 

Ask questions.  The universal sign that we are really listening is that we ask questions.  Those questions demonstrate to those with the power to hire that we are approaching this situation seriously, not just as yet another interview.

 
Pitching to get a job, client or customer is marketing.  Folks buy primarily for emotional reasons.  That means make your marketing reach inside them.

Great Performance Art Trumps Credentials

Way way back, when the labor market was stable, "What Color Is Your Parachute?" hammered the reality that the person who gets hired or gets the customer order is not necessarily the most qualified.  Who wins out is the person who is the most skilled [add "clever"] at going after jobs and new business.

In FORTUNE, career consultant Annie underscores that same point: It's all in how we present ourselves. 

 
 
 I call that "performance art."  No book and no coach can instruct us how to put together our stagecraft, ranging from what goes into the resume to how we comport ourselves on an interview. 

Here practice, as every artist knows, counts a lot.  The more we try out new approaches and improve those which seem to be effective, the better we become in producing the most important performance of our lives, at least during this global downturn.

Tip:  The definition of "insanity" is to continue doing what isn't working.  If our hunt for work isn't turning any up, then let's change what we are doing. 

Hospitality Industry: Hring based on Emotional Intelligence [EI]

The hospitality industry has jobs.  That's because it is a labor-intensive business with high turnover.  After all, it takes a person to greet guests and manage the first desk.

The opportunities range from selling two weeks in mini apartments in extended-stay motels to arranging travel tours to China.  Usually age matters less than the ability to demonstrate high emotional intelligence or a sincere interest in the customer.

How to demonstrate that in the resume and cover letter?  Provide examples of how you went the distance to figure out what a customer needed or wanted and then provided that service or product.  Emphasize good listening skills. 

Language is everything in how you present yourself on paper, in email, over the phone, and in-person.  You can pick up the language that dominates the hospitality industry by pouring over the help-wanted ads.  Notice what language occurs repeatedly.  Then make those terms part of your credentials.

Baby Boomers: Small changes, major impacts

"My field is totally glutted.  How can I earn a decent living as a journalist?"

That's what a 47-year-old woman asked me.  She had called for a complimentary consultation for my career coaching services [mgenova981@aol.com]. 

 

"Are you able and willing to make small changes in how you frame and present your skills and experience?"

That's what I asked her.  At first, she didn't know what I meant.  Then I briefly [the meter wasn't running yet] explained how she could take an inventory of the skills she used to get freelance journalism work and then do it.  The next step was to retrieve online and study the help-wanted ads in related fields, ranging from marketing communications to actual sales. Regarding the latter, I brought to her attention that she had to be a competent salesperson to have gotten enough assignments over the years to generate decent income.

Perhaps the pain of staying where she was professionally had become worse than the pain of trying new things.  Whatever.  She agreed to attempt to migrate out of the journalism box onto other career paths.  For a few weeks, she and I sorted through what she had to sell and how she could sell it.  The game on this is essentially to retrofit earlier experience into what's marketable today.  Frequently that requires translating experience "writing feature articles" into "researching and creating content for diverse formats, in all mediums." 

That takes care of the resume and cover letters. The next step is to present yourself on email, phone, and in-person interviews as the kind of professional they expect to fit into the job description and organizational culture.  There's a learning curve there.  Therefore, grab all the interview opportunities you can get. 

Need more information or insight?  My print book has a lot of that.  It's "Over-50: How We Keep Working."  You can order it here online.

 

Over-50 & Professionally Doomed

There are those who get hit hard by the new professional realities of the 21st century.  However, most of them do wind up saving their economic soul.  I write about how they do that in this free e-book you can download [Download SavingSoulsJaneGenova.]  Having gone through the severe adversity, most of them are actually doing better than before they had been thrown off their game.  More and more research is confirming how empowering setbacks can be.  After all, would Hillary Clinton be such a skillful political player now had she not lost the race for the White House.  In some circles, she is judged shrewder than Bill.

 
Then there are those whose professional souls are doomed.  They are the over-50 who cannot or will not leave their comfort zone to try out the realities which keep mutating.  For example, online marketing was hot and now it's no longer enough. My clients in professional services are scrambling to again provide offline activities like special events, delivering keynote speeches at conferences, and fundraising in the flesh for literacy projects.

So, what keeps those who had been successful starving to death in their comfort zone?  Here is what I have found from coaching, research, and interviewing the experts such as Michael Francoeur of Dale Carnegie Systems.

They can't say good-bye to the past.  It's funny but some of these situations could be made unstuck with just the ritual of a funeral. That rite of passage just might do the trick.  The lawyer who hasn't found a job for two years practicing law might stage a memorial commemorating the pleasure he derived from that career.  In his book "Necessary Endings," Henry Cloud chronicles how those laid off when a whole corporate department was shut down did orchestrate a funeral.

A step backward is unacceptable.  Most of us who made it once will likely make it again and yet again.  That's what cognitive therapist Amy Karnilowicz opined when I interviewed her on the subject of comebacks. However, that new career track has to be put in-place.  Such a rebuilding usually involves less compensation and more work.  For example, in 2003 when my career in executive communications tanked [Download Geezerguts], I took a series of $10 survival jobs while I tried out other lines of work. By early 2005 I had started a social media business that was yielding a profit.  I only needed to take on one more $10 job which actually was $13. 

Counterproductive resumes, cover letters, and interviewing. They don't want to get hired.  That's because they don't believe they can start in something that wasn't in their previous line of work.  Four times I instructed a lawyer to present herself on interviews as a regulatory writer with a legal background.  She kept with the lawyer identity.  I told her she wasn't ready for coaching.  In her late 20s, she's moved back to her parent's home.

Undiagnosed depression.  In most losses - and losing a career ranks as a whopper - most human beings will get depressed.  In that condition they cannot mobilize resources to address their professional challenges. Most primary care physicians can diagnose depression, prescribe temporary medication, and recommend low-cost access to talk treatment.

For more insight and information on climbing out of that hole, you can read my book "Over-50: How We Keep Working."  You can order it online here.

 
  

Baby Boomers: Competing Smarter for Work

No surprise, the effective way to hunt for jobs and assignments is mutating again.  Instead of plopping down for hours in front of the major job boards such as Careerbuilder.com and Craigslist.com, we should go directly to the organization we're interested in. 

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL reports on an analysis by Jobs2web on the hiring process.  When we respond to a help-wanted that isn't on the organization's website, we are pitted against about 219 others who apply.  If we go directly to the organization's website, the competition declines about 32 others.

 

Yesterday, I read the article "Erasing The Digital Past" in THE NEW YORK TIMES.  Essentially, the focus was on how Reputation.com helps remove negative material about companies and individuals on search engines.  The more I read the more interested I was in obtaining freelance assignments from Reputation.com.  So, I figured the first step was to go to its website and get a read on its corporate culture.  In that way I could frame my cover letter to fit. Lo and behold, there was a career section.  There were available jobs and assignments.  One of the latter I qualified for.  The compensation wasn't right.  But on the next opportunity, Reputation.com and I might find a match.

The rest of the afternoon I investigated other websites for other hot companies I would love to do work for.  Just as THE WALL STREET JOURNAL indicates, most had their own job section.  For example, POLITICO.COM posted both its jobs and opportunities with other organizations.

More good news.  Since most of us Baby Boomers are in the market for contract work not full-time jobs we probably assume we will only find those on Craigslist.com.  Forget it.  The just-in-time assignments are also posted on the organization's website.

 

Communicate Younger: The Six Ways

BOSTON MAGAZINE presents 10 ways to look younger.  But, hey, this is a digital age.  Our age is more likely to knock us out of the box on the basis of how we communicate, not so much because of our physical appearance.  The lion's share of our professional life is spend communicating electronically. Skype still transmits video pretty lousy so all generations, not only Baby Boomers are at a disadvantage there.

Here are six ways to communicate younger:

Keep pop culture references current.  The only exception may be the Beatles but don't count on that holding much longer.  Nostalgia about "I Love Lucy" and pop-it beads is luxury we can't afford.  Even among ourselves those dated allusions will turn off those trying to stay on top of their game.

 

Forget snail mail.    Busy people resent that added to-do on their list of opening snail mail.  That negative article in NEW YORK MAGAZINE by Chris Smith regarding new head of NYC schools Cathie Black mentioned how she loved to sit in her office and handwrite little notes to important people like Henry Kissinger.  What hits all the right spots is well-thought prose or poetry [Twitter could be considered a poetic medium] posted in social media.

Be concise. When in doubt that the material is excess, leave it out.  That especially relates to personal branding materials such as cover letters, resumes, LinkedIn and Facebook profiles, books to be published, and email.  Brevity results from digging to the essence of whatever.  Once you do that, you may only need to use a few words or phrases.  Nothing brands us as geezers as verbosity.

Speedread situations and people. The more accurate your grasp is of what is happening and what type of person you're dealing with, the more control you have over what and how you communicate.  Recently there has been quite a bit published on that topic, including  the book"The Art of Speedreading people" by Barbara Barron-Tiger.

Be Detached. Even back when Judy Garland was a star, intensity wasn't, well, cool.  Network executives warned her to cool it down.  Youth takes pride in being detached or have the capability of shrugging things off - or so they want to appear.  Sure, the party line is that employers state that they want passionate workers.  But more often than not that's code for "hard work."  Face it, intensity scares others as well as wears them out.  Articles and books on Eastern philosophy guide us on how to lessen our attachments.

Be real. Embedded in the culture is detailed information about how to penetrate behind the social mask.  If your mask is painted on too thickly, you will have no credibility.  Accept your shadow side and allow others in. 

 

"Some of the best & brightest Baby Boomers are making a mess of career change," Jane Genova, NY State Bar Association

Even the best and brightest among Baby Boomers are having a tough time in career change.  Some are actually making a mess of it, particularly in how they put themselves out there in cover letters, resumes and interviews.  Why?  Usually the shock of having to shift professional gears brings to the surface The Five Demons.  They are:

• Self-hate
• The past
• Ambivalence
• Fear, and
• Immaturity.

In my address to the New York State Bar Association I explain how to exorcise The Five Demons.  In addition, I talk straight from the shoulder about how we got to market ourselves in cover letters, resumes, and interviews.  Here is that talk Download LectureNYSBA.

Another resource is my new book OVER-50: HOW WE KEEP WORKING.